Celebrity Interview - Rick Wills - Comments

Rick Wills

Poster: Annanel Milnes-Smith 01/05/2006

RICK WILLS - ONE-TIME BASS GUITARIST OF ROCK BAND FOREIGNER - TALKS TO ANNABEL MILNES-SMITH ABOUT HIS LATEST SUCCESS WITH THE JONES GANG, AS THEIR SINGLE, DISC ANGEL, HITS NUMBER ONE IN AMERICA.

Rick Wills remains one of the world's most renowned bass guitarists. Over the decades he has played with several famous bands - and now he is touring with Kenney Jones and Robert Hart and their band The Jones Gang, which recently cracked the highly competitive and sometimes cut-throat American music industry.
At eight years of age, Rick saw a guitar and was instantly mesmerised. From that day, his education switched from studying to sketching guitars, while continuously pestering his parents for his first guitar. Realising that Rick's school days were never going to advance at a fast pace, they eventually bowed to the pressure, if nothing else other than to get his academic career back on track. At 10, his dream had been realised, and from that moment he never put it down.
Urban legend has it that, during the sixties, Rick took the rather unusual step of taking a degree in music at Cambridge - but there were no such courses at that time. So what exactly was this degree?
Explains Rick, "I actually lived in Cambridge at that time, and my personal PR since that time worded it in such a way that it appeared as if I studied music at Cambridge University. It was, in fact, when I started playing music; but hey, it looks great on paper.
"My inspiration at that time came from such famous musicians as Lonnie Donegan. He was not only a rock giant, but incredibly funny. He influenced me into injecting humour into my music. Then of course there was Chuck Berry, but my main influence was Cliff Richard and The Shadows. They just blew me away."
Rick's initial rise to success came with his first band, The Sundowners, playing with a chap appropriately called Johnny Wild. "He was a really tall, good-looking guy with Elvis-type hair. During the heady days of the sixties, I could not have had a more appropriately named band member."
Rick was a classic wild child of the sixties. "I never saw myself as one, but it seemed like the thing to do. It was just all happening. Life changed on a day-to-day basis. New bands. Lads turning from teddy boys into mods and, of course, the wild dress code. It was a very exciting time, and incredible freedom from our parents and their Victorian rules. It was just great doing naughty things."
Drugs and booze have always had an enormous effect on the industry, and with Rick's success catapulting him right to the heart of it one wonders, at such a young age, how he coped.
"Well, very sadly it ended many people's lives, but when we were out gigging we all
took pills. It was the only way we could stay awake whilst working those gruelling hours." So how had he coped with fame, especially while playing with Foreigner for 13 years? "I think really it was a gradual process. From being in bands in Cambridge, and moving on to playing with Dave Gilmour whilst travelling all over the world, I suppose it just crept up on me. I realised when I moved back to London, my circle of friends had become larger, and I got used to being around people who were famous. It just grew with the job, as it were.
"When I was asked to join Foreigner, I was pretty much ready for it. However, it was different coping with it on such a huge scale. We were playing in vast arenas and selling millions and millions of records. To be perfectly honest I really enjoyed it."
Who were his most famous friends? "Dave Gilmour has to be one of them." Was it not rather awe-inspiring working with Gilmour from a young age? "No, not really. We both lived in Cambridge and were the same age, with the equal passion for music. We were, however, in rival bands, but that never really mattered, as we were always meeting up at the local music halls. We formed a friendship then and he realised that I was hungry for success and fame like he was. We all knew that Dave was definitely going to make it. It was just a question of when."
That all came to a head when, in 1966, Rick and Dave headed to Spain on a mission. "It was really to get Dave's act together, and get ready for the big time, whilst Brian Epstein was keeping an eye on him."
Was Spain really the right environment for this? "Marbella was nothing like it is now. It was just a little strip with the Marbella Club... and not much else. We were meant to stay at Los Monteros, but when we got there it hadn't even been finished. It was really bizarre. We ended up living in a concrete bunker on the beach, which I believe is still there. It was good getting away from home and all the influences there, and also listening to new bands. It was a great learning curve." Quite obviously it did the trick as, soon after they both returned from Spain and France, Gilmour got the call from Pink Floyd.
So what was it really like being part of such a famous band as Foreigner, and did they ever fight? "I know this may sound boring but we all got on incredibly well. It was just such a mind-blowing band with amazing musicians. What really made us tick is that we could deliver on stage what we had just recorded in the studio. From that point of view, it was a great experience."
Asides from Foreigner, he also played with The Small Faces. Did that give him the same adrenaline rush as Foreigner? "I was absolutely amazed when I was woken one morning at 4.30am with a call from Steve Marriott, who was in the studio in London. He had just had a falling out with Ronnie Lane and they had parted company. He said come down to the studio. I said not at this hour, but I'll come tomorrow. Even so, I was absolutely gob-smacked I had been asked to play with this band. That is when I first met Kenney. It was like a dream, completely unreal."
His latest successful sojourn into the music industry has come with Kenney Jones and singer Robert Hart and The Jones Gang, who recently toured America to rave revues...
"We realised, having jammed at Kenney's polo club Hurtwood, we had a very good basis of a band. Robert, our singer, is a very good songwriter. We recorded our songs at comedian Jim Davidson's studio, which is just down the road. Once we had 12 or 13 songs we started looking for a decent representative. However, many of the British ones would not take us seriously and thought we were too old. They liked the music, but could not see how we would fit in with the many boy bands."
So it was across the water where their potential was realised, with the American distribution company Transworld Entertainment. "They had 400 or so stores across America. We did a distribution deal with them, whereby they put our album in their stores. In return for this deal, they did the most fantastic job marketing us. They put our faces on the sides of aeroplanes and taxi cabs in Florida. It got people's attention, the album got tremendous airplay, and the single disc, Angel, ended up as number one, which none of us could even have imagined! "We would really like to bring The Jones Gang to Spain, and combine polo with a rock concert."
With the band about to release a second single, Gypsy Lane, which will undoubtedly be another number one hit, and with Rick playing with Foreigner when they managed to topple Madonna's single Like A Virgin from number one, I am sure that the people of the Costa del Sol would welcome them with open arms. In fact, rumour has it that they will be playing here in August. In the meantime, readers can check out their website: www.jonesgangmusic.com.

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